


The Arena

by janboy



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-23
Updated: 2018-03-23
Packaged: 2019-04-06 18:31:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,433
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14062911
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/janboy/pseuds/janboy
Summary: Kur Gijak is a half-orc of the Clan Nazak. He was captured and sold to a merchant in the desert city Saa'la, where he is forced to fight in the arena as a pitfighter.





	The Arena

**Author's Note:**

> This is my first piece of writing for an original character ever, so any feedback is greatly appreciated.

Echoes of applause, a foundation shaking roar. Both, fuel for the bloodletting. 

How spilled blood feeds the beast in us all.

Sana silently closed the door behind her. A single candle gave off a faint glow from the corner of the room. In the dim orange light, streaks of crimson accentuated Sana’s cheeks and brow. War paint. Sigils and glyphs from the ancient orcish language of the truebloods, an ancient race of the orcs that had all but gone extinct centuries ago. On her right cheek, it read ‘victory.’ On her left cheek, ‘death.’ Sana approached Kur and lowered herself to a knee. 

Eye-level now, her bright emerald eyes met Kur’s dull green. 

“This is dangerous.” Kur said, his voice a coarse whisper. He hadn’t been given water since the day before. 

“I know,” she responded. 

There was a silent pause between them. Distant thumps were heard above them. The heavier thumps elicited cheers from the crowd. Kur held Sana’s gaze for a moment, then he wearily closed his eyes. Kur sat on his rear, one leg drawn up with his hand wrapped loosely around his knee. His fingers were half-curled, a subconscious twitch possessed Kur’s wrist. The grey skin of his hand was caked in blotches of crusted, dry, blood. Sana reached forward and gripped Kur’s wrist tightly. 

“I received an omen last night,” Sana whispered to him, her tone urgent. She shook his arm to try and get Kur to reopen his eyes. 

In response, Kur snorted. 

“An omen,” he said dismissively. Still, his eyes remained shut.

She hissed in response. “Yes, an omen. You may have abandoned our ways from Nazak but I haven’t. Now open your eyes huzak (idiot) and listen.”

A heavy sigh slipped from between Kur’s lips. Another thump and roar from the crowds above ground, and Kur obliged. His head tilted downwards and he looked at her hand which she had about his wrist. Sana’s skin was more colored than his, a darker forest green. To half-orcs, any tinge of green was a beautiful characteristic, it was a sign of lingering traces of the trueblood orcs from before their time. Interbreeding between species over the generations, as well as a lifestyle of conflict and warfare, muddled and killed off the old race and made the half-orcs come to be the most populous of their kind. 

Kur traced a small scar along the back of Sana’s hand, and he nodded. 

“You were kneeling in the center of the arena,” Sana released his wrist and instead held his hand in her own, “bloody, broken. Swords and spears and axes and hammers… all were in broken piles around you. The doors at the far end of the arena opened and gladiators walked towards you. Still you were frozen. They circled around you and stabbed you until there was nothing left.”

Her voice trailed off and that silent pause returned to envelope them again. Sana’s face remained impassive, but the tightness with which she gripped his hand told more than her expression ever could.

“It was just a dream.”

“No, Kur, it was an omen. I couldn’t sleep for the rest of the night.” 

“When was the last time either of us have truly slept?”

To that, Sana had no answer. She exhaled through her nostrils and her lips drew to a thin line. She was frustrated. The wrong emotion, one that they shouldn’t waste time feeling, given the brief time they had. More quietly, with an uncharacteristically soft whisper, she said, “Just be careful.”

They both heard it at the same time. The shuffling of iron plated boots which marched down the hallway, the shouting, clanging of a familiar metal baton against shackles and cell bars. Surprise filled both Sana and Kur’s faces and they sprung to their feet. Sana was faster, as she always had been. Just as the rusted hinges of Kur’s door were pushed open, Sana balled her right hand into a fist and sent it rocketing towards Kur’s cheek. Mid-way to his feet and with his eyes glued towards the guards who entered, Kur was sent to the floor from the sheer force and surprise of the punch. 

Dirt and blood from a split lip filled his mouth, and he blinked repeatedly to rid his vision of swimming stars. 

“Nazak-CHULL! Lay a hand on me again and I’ll--” Sana’s right foot rose and she pressed it down firmly against the side of Kur’s head, “string your guts along these walls!”

Kur could hear the two guards chuckle as they stood still in the open doorway. He struggled beneath her foot, Kur’s jaw clenched and he growled. His left hand rose and he wrapped it tightly around her ankle then pushed her off. He shook his head and and planted both his hands on the ground to push himself to his feet. A thunderous ache persisted in his cheek, and he looked towards the doorway once more to see Sana striding out of the room, ignoring the provocative words in passing said by the guards. Once she left, it was just Kur and the two men. He recognized them, Bari and Hassan. 

“Is it true that orcs have teeth in their snatch?” Bari said, the shorter and greasier-haired of the pair. He walked forward and opened a pair of satchels towards Kur, waiting expectantly. Hassan walked beside him with his spear raised pointedly towards Kur, encouragement to shackle himself without any problems. 

“I’ve never spent a night with one of those bulls,” Hassan responded, extending his spear to press the tip lightly against Kur’s cheek where Sana had struck him. 

“Kur? Is it true?” 

His response was to silently place his wrists in the shackles. His blood boiled, but he swallowed his rage. Months ago, he would have lashed out. One arm around Bari’s neck would have been enough to snap his neck, but he had tried and felt the repercussions of letting his rage go unchecked before. Hassan and Bari were the advance guards, there were three others waiting outside the door, ready to leap in and attack at the slightest sound of resistance. 

There would be a time for fighting back, to rip the tongue from their poisonous mouths and let them choke on their own blood-- but not yet. 

They led Kur through the pitfighter’s living area. It was moreso row after row of prison cells. All ranges of life resided within the dimly lit cells. Thieves, murderers, bandits… slaves… Captured and sold to the highest bidder without care for discrimination of race. Defeated and skulking forms sat in the corners of their cells while the most pugnacious of the lot were forced to stand with their ankles and wrists chained to the walls of the hallway, their neck clasped tightly as well in place. Kur himself received that treatment for a number of weeks, but he had learned. 

Kur recognized some of the other half-orcs in captivity there. He didn’t make eye-contact with them, even though they had grown up together in Clan Nazak. He kept his eyes forward as he walked past his chained kinsmen.

It was safer that way.

Any ties shown, any friendship or relationship between pit fighters was squashed immediately by the guards. Bonds between fighters would lead to the possibility of revolt or loyalty being formed, something that couldn’t exist if the arena was to continue to exist. Sana’s shift was part of an act, one that was drastic, but necessary. 

Hassan and Bari took a sharp right and they walked into a different hallway from the rows of cells. Dirt ground gave way to wooden boards, and numerous blazing torches illuminated the underbelly of the arena. 

It only took a few minutes for a layer of sweat to coat Kur’s skin. The arena’s blacksmith hammered away at a molten sword’s edge, the furnace exuded incredible heat, and lines of iron and steel weaponry made up the racks along the walls. Ahead of Kur, there were two other rows of pitfighters in shackles, standing and waiting side by side. He stared and stared, and only just caught the side-eye of Sana’s gaze before he was shoved into the line. None of them spoke, the only sound was the rumbling crowd above ground and the clang after clang of the blacksmith’s hammer. 

Bari walked past the two rows of fighters and stood beside the door at the far end of the room. He rested a hand on the wooden lever just beside the door, and he waited. His expression was nonchalant. While some of those in chains trembled in place, emphasized by the rattling of their metal constraints, Bari picked gunk from between his nails. Kur’s hands twitched again, and he curled his fingers into fists. 

Nearly twenty minutes passed in that stuffy, sweaty, silence, before three sharp bangs were heard from the other side of the door. Bari pulled the lever down and the doorway opened to reveal a funnel of sunlight coming from further past the rising stairway. The sound of the crowd was much louder now, their shouting bounced off the walls, all the way down the tunnel to the waiting fighters. When none of them moved, Hassan, Bari, and a number of other guards came up from the rear and began pushing them forward. Their sword and spear points nicked into Kur’s skin as they were corralled up the stairs. 

Each step brought an increase in the level of noise, each step led to more and more sunlight touching Kur’s skin. When they finally ascended from the underbelly, the noise was deafening. Kur let his eyes wander about his surroundings-- masses of screaming faces roared back at him in waves, calls for blood. The sun hung high above them, uncontested by clouds, the sole emperor of the sky. Kur squinted as his gaze lowered to the crowds, and he rested his vision on the man sitting at the far end of the stands. On an elevated platform in the center of the crowd, guards and fan-bearers flanked the merchant who ran the arena. 

Kur narrowed his eyes at the layers of silk that covered the merchant’s body. Golden necklaces, bracelets, rings, that man’s name was branded into the side of his neck in Saa’lan script. A sharp tug at the shackles around his wrists brought Kur’s attention back to the impending battle itself. He looked over his shoulder and saw Hassan, Bari, and the rest of the guards still standing within the passageway behind them. They held the shackles of the fighters in their hands. Then, one by one, they inserted a key into a mechanism at the base of their shackle and a series of clicks began from their twist, up the chains, and all along the metal leading to the fighter’s wrists in the center of the arena. The shackles were unlocked and dropped to the sand, and the passageway shut closed with the guards behind them. 

While the arena was primitive in many aspects, their technology to keep the guards themselves safe and the fighters in chains was impressive. 

The crowd roared. Fighters around Kur rubbed their now freed wrists and looked about them, some of them taking paces away from the others or standing beside allies. All the while, Kur stood in place and only gave Sana a brief glance before looking towards the owner in the crowd again. 

It was unpredictable, the gauntlet they would be thrown into. Some days, it was fighters against fighters. Only indicated by weapons thrown towards the fighters by arena attendants in the lower levels of the stands. Other times, it was them against others. Kur looked towards Sana again, she met his gaze and only blinked. He prayed to those gods from Nazak that he had long ago abandoned that it wouldn’t be the former, the two of them had been lucky that they were never chosen in the same lot for those days. Kur held his breath, and waited.

Some minutes later, attendants began running all along the lower level of the circular arena. Kur watched and dismay filled his heart. They stood at equal distances at each point of the circle, and then they each reached behind the arena wall and dropped a weapon to the sand beneath them. A sword, a hammer, a spear... eight weapons dropped for twenty fighters. 

Before those weapons even hit the ground, other fighters began sprinting towards them. When the game was set, alliances were thrown aside. Kur watched as a man stuck his leg out between the legs of another he had been standing beside, tripping him to the sand and running ahead towards the awaiting hammer. Another gripped the back of a running dwarf’s tattered shirt and flung him to the ground. There, the man rose his foot and drove it down into the dwarf’s face. Blood gushed from his nose, and the man’s foot rose and fell again. The crowd cheered, forever encouraging the first signs of violence. 

Sana was placing herself far from Kur, pacing towards a deposited axe at the opposite end of the arena from him. As his eyes followed her, he nearly missed the fist that was sailing towards the side of his head. Kur acted out of instinct. His torso twisted and he heard a whoosh as the assailant’s fist only met air. Kur kept his head low and he tackled the man to the ground. Sand flew up in plumes around them, and Kur straddled the man’s chest with his fist balled and ready. 

Elison, he was sentenced to the arena for murder. 

Kur brought both his hands together and rose them high above his head, then he slammed them downwards. Blood and screams, the sight of one fueling the other. Again, again. Blood coated Kur’s hands and forearms, the sight of it triggering that rush he felt back in Nazak. He was a berserker. The spearheads of his tribe. He still was. 

Elison’s screams gave way to gurgled moans, strangled coughing as he choked on his own blood. Kur reached beside Elison’s head and grabbed the metal chain that connected the discard fighter’s shackles. He wrapped the chain around Elison’s neck and slowly rose to his feet while pulling the chains up and over his shoulder, pulling and pulling on it until no more sound came from Elison. Then, Kur dropped the body to the ground. 

Of the twenty fighters that were brought to die, eleven remained. They were scattered about the arena, some locked in combat while others ran and clung to the walls, afraid. Kur watched as Sana swung an axe over her head in a downward arc. The axehead was buried in the leveled fighter’s chest, and she roared as she planted her foot on the dead man’s face and pulled the axehead free. Inevitably, there would be only a handful of them left. If the time came, Kur would sacrifice himself so that Sana may come out the victor, but he knew that she would do the same for him. He turned to his right and ran towards the opposite end of the arena, away from her, to delay that which he dreaded. 

(Perhaps he would be slain before having to face her.)

A small cluster of fighters remained clumped in combat. Two of them unarmed, darting and dashing away from the slow strikes of the two who held weapons, tossing sand in their eyes and trying to pry the weapons from their hands. One of them swung a massive weapon, a wooden stick with a granite rectangle at its head, at one of those unarmed fighters. The intended target darted away, but the fighter continued his swing in a full revolution once he heard Kur’s approach. 

It was unexpected. The maul crashed into the side of Kur’s leg and he flipped over the weapon’s head as he toppled to the ground. He tried to roll back to his feet instantly, but the moment any weight was exerted on that leg, a powerful pain shot through him and he fell back to the ground. Sand and sweat obscured his vision, blurry, he looked up and saw the maul-wielder raising the weapon again. As the man rose it above his head, he let out a pained cry. Skin and flesh was torn, blood gushed down from the rusted sword that now protruded from out of the man’s stomach, and the great maul fell to the ground out of his weakened fingers. 

Kur didn’t waste another moment. Luck wasn’t something he relied on, but in this moment it had worked in his favor. 

He kept his weight primarily on his right foot as he rolled again. The woman who saved him pulled her sword out of the man’s stomach, and she turned her attention towards the hobbling Kur. She lunged forward, her face twisted into a snarl and sword dripping blood onto the sand. Kur dodged to the side, wincing as pressure was exerted on his leg, and he reached forward at the extended woman’s sword hand. He grabbed her wrist tightly with his left hand. Then with his right hand, he pressed his palm against her elbow. Without hesitation, he crushed her wrist in his left and yanked it back towards him, while pushing forward with his right hand. 

There was a sickening crack. Another shriek filled the air, answered by a roar of approval by the crowd. Her sword fell to the ground, she fell to a knee as she cradled her arm which was bent in at an unnatural angle. Kur turned and grabbed the handle of the maul, which rested on the ground with its head on the sand, and a rise and fall pummeled the back of the woman into the ground. 

Her spine broke beneath the weight of Kur’s strike. The skin on her back was purple and black where the granite made contact, Kur could see some ribs beneath her skin pushed in flattened and outward positions.

With considerable exertion, Kur drove his right leg into the ground as he shouldered the maul back up and turned to the unarmed fighters now. They made eye contact with the half-orc, fear and helplessness filled their gaze. But before Kur could take a step forward, a grating noise filled the arena. At the far end, the gates opened and four men stepped out. The cheers from the crowd from before were dwarfed by the noise they made now. The very foundations of the arena seemed to shake with their excitement. When the roars died down, the crowd began a rhythmic beat. Stomping and clapping in unison. Kur narrowed his eyes at them, and recognized the armor and weapons those four men wore. 

Real gladiators. Men who volunteered for the arena for the glory it provided. Crowd favorites, and ruthless in their execution.

Kur saw them and let out a relieved sigh.

The game had changed, it was the remaining fighters versus the gladiators now. He wouldn’t have to face Sana.

The two pit fighters before Kur looked towards the slowly approaching gladiators then back towards him. Hector and Loan, he finally remembered their names. Hector darted forward and grabbed the sword the woman had discarded, all the while keeping his eyes glued to Kur’s, before rejoining Loan and backpedaling towards the walls of the arena. 

Those two stuck together, and one of the gladiators veered off and approached them. Another gladiator ran towards Sana and another pitfighter who was still standing, she held her axe tightly and her teeth were barred. The third hung back. He stood with his back resting against the now closed arena gate, his arms folded over his broad chest and his flail rested against his leg. The fourth walked directly towards Kur. His initial steps were walking speed, then he angled the trident he held in his hands towards Kur and entered a sprint. Kur’s grip tightened about the maul’s shaft and he ran forward to meet the gladiator, as fast as his hobbled leg could carry him. The maul was at his side as he ran forward, and he brought his arms back into a mid-level swing, intent to crush the gladiator’s torso. 

But the man was nimble. The gladiator dropped to his knees and mid run and slid beneath the maul’s swing. Having only met air, the maul’s weight carried Kur into the swing and sent him teetering forward precariously. The gladiator spun to his feet and thrusted forward with his trident. Once, twice, he jabbed his weapon into Kur’s back, tearing his skin and drawing blood before Kur regained his balance and turned to face him again. New pain filled his body, from his leg still and now from the open wounds on his back. He let out a growl, and the gladiator rose both his arms and hopped from his right foot to his left foot, much to the joy of the crowd. 

This time the gladiator feinted a swipe at Kur’s torso and lunged high, those wicked three-prongs angled to bury into Kur’s shoulder. The halforc just barely rose the maul up in time, horizontally, to catch the trident head between the shaft. 

Then came the crack.

It lasted a millisecond, a single crack that flowed into another. Branching into multitudes in the maul’s shaft before the break.

Wood splintered and snapped in two, those three-prongs continued their vicious path into Kur’s shoulder. The gladiator seized on the surprise and drove the trident home, sweeping Kur’s legs from beneath him and pinning him to the ground. All the while, Kur could only think of Sana’s omen.

Broken weapons, stabbed and bleeding in the center of the arena.

The gladiator pressed his foot on Kur’s chest and pressed all his weight behind the trident, twisting and turning the embedded weapon while Kur could feel his flesh being shredded beneath it. The pain, such pain, racked his whole body from his legs to his chest. It was similar to the amount of pain he felt back in Nazak, spearheading his tribe as a berserker. Near to no armor, with the two axes his father passed down to him. He would willingly take blows to fuel the fire within him. That pain, it only fueled his rage. 

Kur blinked back to reality. The gladiator continued to press into the trident, but his helmet was raised towards the masses, soaking in their approval. Kur’s hands were wrapped about the trident’s base, a bit of resistance from having it dig even further into his body. More moments passed, more heartbeats, thunderous, Kur could hear each pulse of his heart in his ears, it drowned out the crowd, he could feel his veins pumping blood through his body, his limbs, he could feel his blood sparking to life as more of his own blood soaked the sands about him. Kur clenched his jaw, then he pulled the trident down. Further, further into his shoulder. The gladiator was caught off guard and his head snapped back down to the halforc with the sudden disappearance of Kur’s grip, and more pain flooded from his shoulder. It felt as though the metal of the trident was teetering on the edge of bursting through the back of his shoulder. But that pain ignited something primal within him.

Kur roared. At the gladiator, at the crowd, at the arena, to the bastard who had ordered him shackled and stuffed into the underbelly of this place. He roared for Nazak, for those he’d lost, and he roared for Sana. 

Right hand released the trident completely, it dug further into his body, and Kur grabbed the gladiator’s standing leg. He squeezed the man’s ankle and pulled to the side. The gladiator fell to the ground and Kur rose to his feet. Cheers and cheers still, those voices that supported the underdog of the arena grew to full volume as Kur rose to his feet. The trident was torn out of his shoulder with little regard for the twisted prongs that rended more of his flesh on the way out, and Kur tossed it to the ground. He rose his foot and slammed it down onto the gladiator’s helmet. Once, twice, a third time, when the man was dazed Kur turned around and looked towards the shattered granite maul. 

Where the maul’s shaft met the stone, there was a small hollowed out area where a metal crosspiece was bolted to the wooden shaft. That crosspiece served as a handle as Kur slowly picked up the massive stone with his uninjured arm. He stood over the gladiator, bleeding and crippled, and he rose his left hand and sent it flying down towards the gladiator’s head. 

Stone crushed metal. Blood and flesh exploded from the gaps in the helmet and gushed to either side of the maul. A collective ‘oooh’ rang out from the crowd in unison, while Kur rose the stone and slammed it down again, dropping to a knee as the helmet was now completely crushed beneath the stone. 

Slowly, his fingers uncurled from the cross piece and Kur rested on his knees. His shoulders sagged and he tilted his head back towards the sky. Thankfully, thick clouds momentarily blocked the sun and cast a shadow over the arena. After a few moments of letting his eyes rest, he opened them and looked to his right. Loan stood over a dead gladiator, victorious but breathing heavily. Pinned against the wall was Hector, dead, a spear buried into his heart. Kur’s head turned and he looked to the left and he saw Sana, sitting against the arena wall with her axe between her lap. Both the remaining pitfighters and the gladiator near her lay dead on the sand. 

Now the crowd had finally begun to quiet down. Some began filing down towards the exists of the arena, while other streetrats hopped over the bannisters and began sifting through the dead bodies for trinkets to steal. In a few moments, the arena owner’s guards would come from the gates and shoo the rats off, then begin the process of cleaning the arena and sending the survivors back to their cells. 

Kur opened his eyes again, and he looked towards Sana. Even from across the arena, he could see that she met his gaze. In a small gesture, brief and indiscernible to the observing eye, Sana rested her hand over her heart. Kur nodded his head and masked the return gesture behind a scratch at his neck.

My heart, she said.

He responded, For you.


End file.
